Because of conflicts with band practice, I ended up having to drop out of Eric's terrificly zany 3.5 game (I was a female yak-otaur who embodied the goddess of destruction), but I really liked the atmosphere of gaming in people's homes, as a change from the open gamestore play of SGBoston. After working out some scheduling issues, I ended up starting a game of Bliss Stage with Robert, Dev, and Eben last Thursday (our second session was yesterday). I hadn't actually played Bliss Stage since I playtested in with Ben over a year ago, but it was great to come back to it after a while and remember how much I like it.
SESSION 1: Planning
We decided that the aliens should take the form of bio-mechanical sea life, based sorta on the Invid from later Robotech, and be associated with the water. Additionally, in the dreamworld, everything appeared as if it were under several fathoms of seawater, with the light of the sun or moon trickling in from above. Motion was slowed, and you couldn't see more than a few dozen yards in front of you.
Our crew of post-apocalyptic alien fighters is based out of Entertainment Cinemas Fresh Pond, one of the worst movie theaters in the greater Boston area. The actual ANIMa rigs themselves are housed on an old boxcar resting on the tracks behind the Fresh Pond Mall (which is actually an old shopping center, not a mall). There are four rigs, but one of them is half-disassembled, it's parts used for other things. One of our former pilots, Martin, died in that rig.
Our authority figure is Everett, who just showed up at Alewife one day with a backpack full of gear and schematics, appearing to be in his late 20s at that point (now early 30s, probably). Nobody really knows where he came from or how he got out of Boston proper, which is across the river and basically unreachable, not to mention frequently on fire. He's also the only adult that anyone's ever seen and no one knows how he's managed to stay awake after the Bliss. Why he picked the movie theater gang, out of all the local gangs, to team up with is anybody's guess.
Eben's pilot is Topher, the youngest kid (now 13) of a relative large family that was eating at McDonalds when The Bliss hit. He's the only one of his family to survive, but is was young enough that he doesn't really remember the time before The Bliss. Eben's anchor is Wendy, the local 16yo "den mother" figure (Comforting) who also has a confrontational relationship with Everett that just recently turned romantic. Everybody's still trying to figure out what that means and how they feel about it.
Robert's pilot is Samir, the 17yo son of liberal Iranians who fled the revolution with his mother after his father was killed. One of Samir's best friends was Martin, the pilot who was killed, and his relationship with Everett is broken because of it. Robert's anchor is Saul, a young born-again kid who read the Bible on his own and has developed his own personal belief system based on it, since there's no one else to instruct him, based on radical compassion (Driven).
Dev's pilot is Jane, a 15yo mother of a small child, Promise, who has responded to the crisis by trying to preserve the family structure and insist that everything can basically still go on as normal, squeezing one's entire life into the span of 18 years. Dev's anchor is Kane, who is a rake and more than a bit of a player (Savy).
Other characters include: - Ross, Jane's boyfriend and baby-daddy, who works on the ANIMa machines - Promise, Jane's baby son - Sasha, a kid who serves as the oracle of Fresh Pond, determining when the water is safe to drink - Betsy, Wendy's sister, who isn't so happy about Wendy getting all the attention - Melissa, Samir's girlfriend, who we don't know much about yet - Otter and Clash, key members of the Alewife Gang - The Baron, a local drug-dealer selling Charles River water
Our group's Hopes were: 1. I hope we can communicate with the aliens. 2. I hope we can build something that lasts (beyond this generation).
The default first mission is for all three pilots, who each have to complete the objectives 1) protect the base, and 2) defeat an alien pilot. I described storm clouds traveling up from the river, straight towards the movie theater and the boxcar where the rigs are held, so the pilots suited up and headed out.
Jane was up first, anchored by Wendy. A giant, clear glass worm with a mouth like a lamprey descended out of the cloud, dangling by its tail, and started quickly tearing its way up Mass Ave. Being translucent, you could only really make out its shape from the rubble it was ripping up, which covered bits of its body. Dev botched his first roll, so the worm swallowed him and started digesting Jane's knight-like mech, pulling it up towards the cloud (all of which Jane could see from the inside, since it was made of glass). Rolling again, Dev manifested some additional weapons, including a giant hammer, and smashed the beast from the inside, stopping its advance (Protection x1).
Topher, anchored by Saul, then fought an uncountable number of inky black tentacles that descended from the same cloud formation, ripping them to pieces with his trident, (Protection x2) but also having one slither down the air-hose of his mech, which was shaped like an old-school diving suit, complete with fishbowl helmet. At this point, the cloud split in two, with one half trying to escape back towards the river, while the other half made a suicide run directly for the base.
Samir, anchored by Kane, was back at the base and prepared to intercept the remaining attacker, which was dropping small stinging jellyfish like snowflakes. However, Samir, who had a "new style" mech styled on the look of the aliens themselves -- a black boomerang shape that was a cross between a manta ray and a stealth bomber -- decided to go straight for the pilot first. As he approached it, a giant angler lure with a illuminescent orb dangled out of the cloud, distracting him momentarily ("Kane... there's a light... I think... it's very bright... and... there's something strange... wow... do you see this?"), but then he flew right into the cloud, right into a giant mouth full of teeth and out the top of the pilot's head (Defeat Pilot x1). The severed glowing lure orb flew off and I described it crushing a few cars (later we retconned that it fell into the pond next to the Alewife train station).
Jane and Topher, meanwhile, chased after the fleeing cloud, which was heading through Harvard Square towards the collapsed bridge that used to lead over the Charles River ("If it gets to the river, we're screwed!"). Despite the painful stings of more snowing jellyfish, Jane managed to pull the pilot -- a giant stingray -- out of the cloud and hold it still (Defeat Pilot x2) while Topher stabbed it in the head with a trident (Defeat Pilot x3). While they were doing this, it struggled and sprouted a whole ton of eyes, but they managed to destroy it.
Finally, Samir's airship deployed a large net to capture all of the jellyfish that were still snowing over the base (Protection x3) and flew out west to dump them all somewhere over Arlington. And then we were out of time, so we wrapped up for the night and planned to continue the next session.
This week upped the ante! Can't wait for the next session!
First, Dev requested a scene between Jane and Ross, Jane's boyfriend and baby-daddy. Ross had been asked by Everett to fully disassemble Rig 4 (the one Martin died in) and move it to another boxcar. Ross was straining to unscrew a bolt when Jane arrived and pointed out it turned the other way. Then they had a confrontation about Jane wanting Ross to watch their son, Promise, while she was on missions. Ross was like, "My work is important too!" and Jane was like, "I'm trying to save the world here!" and Ross was like, "I get it! EVERYTHING IS LIFE OR DEATH HERE!" Then Otter walked in, seemingly out of nowhere, and began helping Ross with Rig 4. Jane left. (Stress Relief or Trauma Relief, I don't remember).
Then Eben requested a scene between Topher and Sasha, the oracle of Fresh Pond. Topher grabbed a soccer ball and went to visit Sasha, who was walked around the pond in a meditative fashion. They kicked around the ball for a bit and talked about the weird clouds, but then just had some really awkward attempts at deeper conversation before Sasha accidentally kicked the ball into the pond. "It... might be okay for me to go get it," he said. Topher said not to bother, but he got out a long aquarium rod with a net on the end and tried to reach out for the ball. Topher eventually pulled him away, said, "Nevermind, it's just a ball," and left. (Intimacy Building).
Robert requested a scene between Samir and Kane, his troublemaker anchor. So they went out in the evening looking for the severed lure, which we retconned to be in the pond behind the Alewife train station (different from Fresh Pond), instead of having crushed cars in the Fresh Pond Mall parking lot. They snuck through the abandoned power relay station and up to the back of Alewife, where Clash and The Boys were loading some equipment into the back of a 18-wheeler that sat on a dirt path behind the station. They tried to sneak around, but Samir was drawn hypnotically by a force he could feel in the pond, walking right up to the group of Alewife Boys. Kane ran after them and tried to act like they were just walking up. "Did Everett send you over to help?" Clash asks. "Uh... yeah, definitely," says Kane. "What's wrong with your boy, there? Is he drunk?" Samir just blinks and looks dazed. "Oh, we just had a big mission," Kane says. Clash offers Samir a beer, which Kane doesn't let him have. Eventually they talk their way out of there and Kane forcibly pulls Samir away from the pond. (Trust Building).
For the last interlude scene, Eben asks for a scene between Topher and Everett. I suggest that Topher arrives early for the next mission and Eben describes him standing around pouting, making loud sighs. Everett first looks like he's going to be annoyed by this, but then softens and asks what's wrong. They talk a bit about how tough things have gotten and Topher mentions that he doesn't even really remember what it was like before The Bliss, before things got tough and kept getting tougher. So Everett walks him over to the movie theater, shuffled through some old rubbish and pulls out a preserved package of Milk Duds, which somehow managed to survive being scarfed by raiding gangs or hungry children in the 7 years since The Bliss. Eben describes all of the Milk Duds having melted together into a solid bar. Topher takes a bite and then it's on to Mission #2. (Trauma Relief).
Everett described this as a simple transport mission in two parts.
First, Rig 4 was being given to the Alewife Gang, with the intent that they reassemble it and eventually develop their own pilot program. Some of the pilots, especially Samir, objected to this, but Everett seemed to think it wasn't under debate. Rig 4 had been placed in a separate boxcar and one pilot was to push the boxcar up the rails to behind Alewife, where Clash and The Boys would load it up on their 18-wheeler and drive it down a dirt road to the rear of the station. A second pilot would protect the boxcar and the pilot pushing it during the two separate legs of the journey. Basically:
Pilot 1 (Jane): 1) Push boxcar halfway there, 2) move some other train cars out of the way and push the boxcar all the way to meet Clash at the truck. Pilot 2 (Samir): 1) Protect the boxcar on the first leg, 2) protect the boxcar on the second leg.
The other part of the mission involved Otter driving a different 18-wheeler up from Harvard Square to Alewife, carrying additional equipment that was needed for the new pilot program. It was not clear what this equipment was, how the Alewife Gang had acquired it, or who they were cooperating with in Harvard that allowed them to even be down in that area (since it was controlled by other gangs). Basically:
Pilot 3 (Topher): 1) Guard the truck from Harvard to the Ringe split, 2) guard the truck all the way down Ringe to Alewife.
The pilots ended up going with the same anchors they had last time. However, things got really bad really fast.
Dev botched his first roll pretty solidly, rolling 5 minuses and one blank on 6 dice. The crazy kelp that covered the tracks in the dreamworld started tying up Jane's mech and barnacles with eyes instead of beaks started growing all over her shield. Robert thankfully rolled much better, so Samir used the lasers of his airship to blast the barnacles and kept off Jane (Protect Rig x1). On the other side of Cambridge, Eben rolled well and Topher easily cleared debris out of the way of Otter's truck (Guard Truck x1).
In the second round of rolls, Jane brought in her giant hammer, bashed the remnants of the barnacles to pieces, and then used a grappling hook to drag the boxcar halfway to its destination (Push Boxcar x1). However, things were not looking good for Jane, so Wendy pulled the plug. Robert decided that Samir would pick up Jane's unfinished objectives. The airship's lasers blew up the traincars that were blocking the path and then Samir used his own hooks to drag the boxcar to its destination (Push Boxcar x2). Topher, just a few blocks away now ("Do you see anything?" "Not really... I..." [sound of traincars exploding] "Okay, now I do!"), easily aces his second roll and protects the truck all the way to Alewife (Guard Truck x2).
By the third round, the aliens have finally been alerted that something weird is happening around Alewife, so Robert (as Saul) says, "Oh no, it's those crazy razorcrabs again!" describing three giant flying crabs whose legs have been replaced by a buzzsaw. Awesome. However, as Samir, Robert is less lucky, rolling only a single plus in his final objective, protecting the Rig from the razorcrabs. He decides that Samir is enraptured with the glowing orb he can see in the bottom of the pond near Alewife. The stingray bomber mech crashes directly into the pond -- the first time anybody's entered the water in this game -- and since Robert places minuses in both Mission and Pilot Safety, he invokes the Flashback rules.
FLASHBACK! I describe entering the water in the dreamworld as coming out of the water into a sky filled with a blindingly bright light. Samir's mech drifts uncontrollably in this bright void, straight towards the glowing orb that drew him here. Robert loves it and says he wants a flashback featuring Martin, his friend who died in Rig 4 some months in the past. We decide that Samir and Martin were on a mission on the bridge over the Charles when one of the local Harvard Square gang blew the bridge up, dropping both Samir and Martin's mechs into the Charles. So the flashback is to the first time Samir fell into the water, back when he had his "old style" mech which looked like a mechanical wasp. Martin's mech is an upright grasshopper, like something out of James & The Giant Peach. They stare at each other for a while, floating in the light, unable to communicate by radio but mouthing words to each other through the cockpit canopies of their mechs. Finally, Martin pushes Samir's mech back towards the "surface," his own mech drifting in the other direction, further into the light. Samir throws a grappling hook back into the dreamworld and dives down after Martin, but Martin's eyes have closed completely, as if he's succumbed to The Bliss. Samir fires some railguns into the abdomen of Martin's mech, which manages to jolt him awake, and drags both of them back into dreams, away from the light. The final image of the flashback is the two of them coming to in the tanks, giving each other weak smiles of triumph through the glass and goo. (Trauma Relief, since you can'd build Intimacy with the dead.)
Back in our current time, Topher decides to hotshot a new objective: pulling Samir's mech out of the pond. Hooking himself onto the shore, much like Samir did in the flashback, he wades into the pond, acting much like the diving suit that his mech is modelled after, and rolls enough pluses to pull Samir out. (Save Samir x1). Of course, we agree that Samir grabbed the glowing angler lure and has brought it back from the light with him. Topher them proceed to royally whup up on some razorcrabs, throwing his trident at one, jumping up, pulling it out and spearing the other two with it, rolling almost all pluses and completing Samir's final objective for him (Protect Rig x2).
Of course, Samir isn't done yet. Robert declares he's hotshotting a new objective: bringing the glowing lure back with him to the real world. He doesn't roll that well, but he places his pluses where they matter and takes a bunch of damage in all his other areas (Remove Lure x1). And so the final image of this episode is Samir coming to, his Rig tank immediately filling with black squid-like ink, and then a glowing light emerging from within the darkness of the tank...
After some weeks of delay, we got together again! By design we wanted a more downtime-y session, so this one was rich in interlude scenes. Things opened with the ANIMa tanks being closed indefinitely, after last week's events. Samir was running a high fever, while Everett was busy setting up new tanks with the Alewife Gang, seemingly put the rest of the crew's missions on hold.
Topher and Saul are hanging out by the Alewife complex, looking from a distance at the work that seems to be going on to put the new ANIMa units together. They're both truly baffled with why Everett is trusted the Alewife kids with this new gear, and Saul brings up a metaphor about Joshua and the horn he was given by god, except it didn't work because his people sinned and raped and stole (or something). This became a discussion of whether Jesus was the ultimate anchor or pilot, or whether God was the anchor AND pilot and Jesus was his ANIMa. (Things nearly came to blows; Topher was certain that Jesus would not be "just a pilot", and that he clearly would have a more active role in things. Saul very much disagreed that the anchor's role was a passive one.) [Stress Relief]
Jane comes up to where Everett is overseeing the work, and she tries to get some understanding of what's going on -- whether her boyfriend Ross will get a break from work, whether there will be more missions, and whether Samir is safe to jack in again. Everett assures her that everything is according to the plan, and suggest that Jane should be the one to test the new ANIMa tank. [Intimacy Building]
Samir wakes up - nearly a week later - with Wendy tending to him. He has a splitting headache, but starts to recall what exactly happened. They discuss what happened, but Wendy holds back on some details, as Everett asked her too; Samir gets way paranoid. [Trauma Relief]
We then tossed in an extra scene without pilots: at the old traincar/tank, which Everett has sealed off from peole (and where the Orb is being kept). Some young kids (the next generation of pilots, if you will), are keeping an eye on the traincar while sharing a smoke. Kane appears, and explains to them how they can keep a secret -- even from Everett. With a little bribe of some more cigarettes, they give Kane another chance to again look upon the Orb he only glimpsed earlier. After a few minutes inside, he leaves (clearly sweating and pale) and warns the kids from looking at the Orb. Of course, they do.
Everett describes this as a simple mission for Jane: once she's in, "simply" Form Her ANIMa, and Move Around A Bit. This operation is happening in the new Alewife tank. It's built in a converted subway car, sealed off so it can fill up with liquid - from the Alewife Pond, no less - while the other half is where the Anchor does his thing, a clear pane of plastic in between.
Saul is anchoring Jane in. (We ruled that Jane still gets the Anchor dice and whatever dice she wants to call up, even as willing the ANIMa into being is counting as its own task.) The dreamspace looks different here; it's more darker and green (as if more deeply underwater) with moonlight shimmering down, rather than a sun.
Dev rolls poorly for the first objective, trying to summon Jane's ANIMa. Mission succeeds (ANIMa forms), but trauma means that Pilot Safety soaks up two blanks, and his anchor's relationship has to take a minus (which we defined as a major feedback shock, but not disconnecting Saul or anything). The nightmarish bit: the ANIMa that Jane has formed is... Martin's ANIMa. (Jane screams upon realizing this. It's just obscene.)
Saul mentions something "really big" is coming up on the radar, but then blinks away again. Jane frustratedly tries to do a quick scouting run to the pond. The dice are better this time, but again there are two blanks on Pilot Safety: as she returns to her standing point, she suddenly realizes she is eclipsed a slow-moving, massive shadow from above blotting out the moonlight. It is a huge whale-like creature, as big as Alewife itself. She turns to catch a glimpse of this creature - just as she is ejected.
...
(I'll let JW handle the post-mission Interludes, or come back to them later.)
Trying to catch this up to what we've done since then.
One thing Dev didn't mention: in the scene between Jane and Everett, Everett said that he was worried Jane was "losing her edge" because she was worried about coming back alive and taking care of her child. This established Everett as an enormous asshole.
Session 3: More Interludes
Samir and his girlfriend Melissa went on a date, a picnic in the grass near the lake. Samir was still bandaged up from his bizarre encounter with the orb. He tells Melissa that maybe he doesn't want to fly anymore and she tells him that she had a little fling with Everett back when he first arrived. Awkwardness all around, but we learn that Melissa is both tough and relatively direct.
Topher was hanging out at the candy counter of the movie theater, talking with the younger kids, when Otter awkwardly walks up (baseball bat in hand) and knocks on the door, wanting to speak with Topher. They walk awkwardly over to the pond in the back of Alewife, where marks on the ground make it clear that something really big has emerged from the lake or been dragged out of it. Topher says something like, "We haven't been flying missions for a while, but it's not clear whether the aliens have been inactive as well." Otter asks Topher some awkward questions about what it's like to be a pilot.
Samir comes to see Jane, wanting to talk to another pilot about his worries about flying. Jane basically agrees with him, tells him that things have been getting crazy, and suggests that maybe not flying again is a good decision.
Weeks later, Wendy comes rushing over to the movie theater on an ATV. There's been an accident involving Otter, who's been training to be a new pilot in the Alewife rig. On a mission for Everett, he crossed the river into Boston proper and has been captured by the aliens. They tried to pull the plug on Otter, but it didn't work, probably something having to do with the alien interference. Topher and Jane jump into their tanks, but Samir is ignored (there are only two tanks now, since the orb is still in his).
Jane goes first, successfully crossing the Charles by jumping between the pillars that remain of the collapsed Harvard bridge. Then Topher plugs in, appearing right next to Jane and, consequently, not having to make the crossing himself. They fan out to look for Otter, though this whole area is covered in long fronds of seaweed, making it nearly impossible to see anything.
Topher finds Otter's ANIMa being pulled apart by long strands of kelp, with Otter floating in the midst of it, eyes closed as if Blissed Out. Fighting off the kelp, he takes Otter into his own ANIMa and attempts to jack out, taking Otter back with him. He fails the mission objective, though, so Otter remains behind even though Topher arrives back okay. Jane triangulates back to where Topher was, manages to fight through the kelp and place Otter back inside his ANIMa, relaying a radio message back to Wendy (who relays it to Everett back at Alewife) to pull the plug on Otter. This time it works but, before Otter leaves the dreamworld, Jane sees a fishy tenril, like the tail of an immensely long eel, wrap itself around Otter's head from inside his ANIMa, as if the aliens put something else (like an alien pilot) inside Otter's ANIMa.
Topher and Saul immediate jump on their bikes and head over to Alewife to make sure Otter is okay. Along the way, Topher asks Saul about Gethsemane, about Jesus not really wanting to do what God wanted him to, hinting that he, like Samir, may be having second thoughts about piloting. But Saul says that, in the end, Jesus did what he had to do because there wasn't really anything else.
Jane goes to see Wendy, who is knitting while watching an unconscious Otter. Jane tries to tell Wendy about the eel wrapping around Otter's head in the dreamworld, but Wendy dismisses this with, "Jane, we have much better sensors in the new rig. We probably know more about what's happened than you do." Jane is clearly really upset by Wendy continuing Everett's habits of secrecy and being an asshole.
At this point, Robert requested a humanization scene involving Everett, so he wouldn't just be this mysterious asshole, but we had to quit early, before we could do that scene. More in a sec...